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Matthew Bailes, born 1963 in Alice Springs, N.T. speaks about his parents and family; his childhood; views on religion; schooling; scientific heroes and interests in reading; undergraduate years at University of Adelaide; his interest in university student politics; why he majored in physics; the lecturers in physics at University of Adelaide; Don McCoy; going to Mount Stromlo for PhD thesis; meeting Dick Manchester from Australia Telescope National Facility (ATNF); the first measurement of proper motion of pulsar; first pulsar parallax measurement; work on origin of pulsar velocity; highly cited papers; Dick Manchester; Ken Freeman, astronomer at Mount Stromlo; NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre; Jodrell Bank Observatory at Manchester University; Andrew Lyne; the discovery of a planet and the retraction of this discovery; writing software for large ATNF pulsar survey; Sir Graham Smith (Astronomer Royal); Bernard Lovell; Dennis Walsh (gravitational lens); motivations for moving to ATNF and then Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing; Rachel Webster.
Bailes discusses the Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing Centre; Margaret Mazzolini; On-line astronomy course; Chris Fluke; educational movies and additional source of funds; Virtual Room; using supercomputer for correlation work; papers written in collaboration with a large number of astronomers; the discovery of pulsars; Jocelyn Bell; the discovery of millisecond pulsars in 47 Tucanae and significance of the discovery; binary radio pulsar PSR 1259-63; eccentric orbit around Be star; pulsar statistics; birth rate and spin periods of radio pulsars; discovery of nearby binary millisecond pulsar, PSRJ0437-4715 and significance of discovery; very bright pulsar; test of General Theory of Relativity; model on pulsar velocities; experimental confirmation; survey frequency: 20cm and 70cm; Parkes Southern Pulsar Survey, low luminosity pulsars; binary pulsar distances; comments on differences between Labor and Liberal policies for science; strengths of Australian astronomy; on changes taking place in universities; establishment of new research centre in astronomy at Swinburne; role of Swinburne in public education and outreach; his family; major achievements in life to date.
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